I don’t like the term bisexual; I prefer to think of myself as a person of no fixed sexual orientation. It better suits the amorphous world I inhabit.
“How do you identify?”
“Oh, I’m a PoNFSO.”
Okay; it’s a little unwieldy, and abbreviated, it hardly rolls off the tongue. So, neither fish nor fowl, I content myself with being the bacon in the LGBT sandwich.
I didn’t come of age as a free-spirited bisexual. I always knew it was what I was, at least from the point at which I knew what the term meant. As a child, I had crushes on both boys and girls. When my best friend in high school lost her virginity, I was beside myself. But how was I to tell her I was in love with her -- especially after I had spent the previous year utterly smitten with a boy?
I remember being very little, maybe four, watching the Ed Sullivan Show, mesmerized by the siren on the screen, Miss Peggy Lee.
In my memory, she is wearing a satin evening gown and a feather boa. I’m laying on my belly, looking up at the television. I can still feel the scratchy texture of the fake-braided rug on my elbows as I propped up my head with my arms.
I didn’t know whether I wanted to be Peggy Lee, or just wanted to touch her.
